Sharing and visibility

Access to a space is two independent things. Visibility is a single flag, public or private, that decides whether a stranger with the link gets in. Access is a per-person list, which decides who gets in when the space is private. Maps carry their own copy of both, and vignettes have a third, separate scheme of their own.

The home dashboard labels each space with the result:

Label	What it means
Private	You own it, and it is not public.
Shared	Someone else owns it and gave you access, or gave you access to a map inside it.
Public	Anyone with the link can open it.

Changing visibility

From inside a space, File > Visibility opens a two-option dialog. The choices are labeled honestly in the product itself: Public, “Anyone with the link can view this space”, and Private, “This space is only visible to you and users you share it with”. Pick one and press Save. The menu item only appears for space owners.

From the home dashboard, open Space Settings on a space card (the info icon). The Overview section has a Visibility dropdown with the same two values. Non-owners see the current value as a read-only badge.

There is no third “shared” visibility to choose. A space becomes Shared by having people on its access list, not by picking a setting.

Giving specific people access

Per-user access lives in Space Settings > Sharing, under People with access.

1. Open Space Settings for the space from the home dashboard.
2. Scroll to Sharing. The owner is listed first, then everyone else who has been granted access.
3. Type an email address, choose User or Owner, and press Add.
4. Change or revoke later from the same list: the role dropdown changes a person’s role, and the remove control revokes access entirely.

If you are not an owner the panel is read-only and says so: “Only owners can change access.”

Adding someone here does not notify them. They see the space appear under Shared on their own home dashboard the next time they load it.

Maps inside a space

A map has its own public flag and its own access list, which is why “Shared” can mean you were given one map rather than the whole space. In Space Settings > Content > Maps, each map row has a visibility control and a share control that opens Share Map, with the same email-and-role form as the space list.

The rules the backend enforces:

• A public space is readable by anyone, signed in or not.
• A private space requires an access grant on that space.
• A direct grant on a map always lets you open that map, whatever the space says.
• A public map is visible if its space is public, or if you have any grant on a space that contains it.
• A private map is visible only through a direct map grant, or if you are an owner of a containing space.

The practical consequence: making a space public does not automatically expose every map in it, and making a map private does not hide it from space owners.

Vignettes

A vignette is shared by link, and it uses its own three-way setting rather than the space’s. Open Share Options on a vignette to see it under General Access:

Setting	Who can open the link
Anyone with the link	Anyone.
Unlisted	Only people on the vignette’s access list.
Private	Only you.

Only the vignette’s creator can change this. Everyone else sees the current value and a note saying so.

When a vignette is Unlisted, its creator gets an Add people field: type an email, press Add, and that address joins People With Access, where the creator can also remove it again. The copy button next to Share Options puts the vignette link on your clipboard.

Vignette access is entirely separate from space access. Setting a vignette to “Anyone with the link” does not make the space public, and someone who can open the vignette cannot necessarily open the space it came from.

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